About Henson Walker, Jr.

"...Walker, Henson – (11th Ten) Born March 13, 1820, in Manchester, Ontario Co., N.Y., to Henson and Matilda Arnell Walker. The family moved to the Michigan frontier in 1835 where he became a skilled hunter. In 1840, he was baptized and a year later he married Martha Bouk. They moved to Salem, N.Y., where he was ordained a teacher. The following year they moved back to Michigan and visited Nauvoo, and met Joseph Smith. In 1843, his wife died and he moved to Nauvoo and he lived with his father-in-law. Here he became well-acquainted with Joseph Smith and once in 1843, as a member of the Nauvoo Legion, took part in a rescue effort when the Prophet was kidnapped. After the martyrdom, he worked on the Nauvoo Temple and was married there to Elizabeth Foutz on April 10, 1846. In May, they began the exodus to Winter Quarters. He returned briefly to Nauvoo to help defend the remaining, and then moved on to Winter Quarters. He volunteered for the Mormon Battalion, but was released. He joined the first company in the spring of 1847 as a hunter, though ill with a sever fever. He left his wife near death. After arriving in Salt Lake Valley, he started back to Winter Quarters but met his wife, now healthy, and father-in-law Bouk at the Sweetwater River in Wyoming. He returned to spend the first winter in Salt Lake Valley. That summer the crickets came and were devouring the crops. Promised by Jedediah M. Grant that "this present calamity will pass off," Walker and his family stopped fighting the crickets that came thicker than ever. That evening the miracle of the gulls occurred. "I wept for joy, as I saw how miraculously we had been saved from starvation," he said. In 1849 he was in a skirmish with Indians. In 1850 he went to the Platte River with others and operated a ferry, earning enough that he paid $75 in tithing. He settled at Pleasant Grove, Utah Co., Utah, where he was appointed presiding elder and later bishop. When the community was incorporated, he was its first mayor. In 1863 he was called on a mission to England and presided over the Scottish Mission until returning in 1865. He later filled two missions to the Northern States, and was president of the high priests of the Alpine Stake. He died in Pleasant Grove Jan. 24, 1894, at age 73..."